NFL owners tabled playoff expansion until at least 2015 and surprisingly spurned New Orleans in favor of Minneapolis for the 2018 Super Bowl at their meeting in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said after the meeting he still expects the postseason field to be increased by one team per conference but that it will not happen this year because the league has other priorities.

“We’re focusing on building ‘Thursday Night Football’ for now,” Goodell said, referring to the lucrative TV package that is expanding to CBS this fall.

Giants co-owner John Mara, chairman of the league’s powerful management council, told reporters Tuesday he is opposed to expanding the playoffs and doesn’t consider it an eventual certainty like Goodell.

“I don’t think it’s a sure thing at all,” Mara said at the meeting. “I would probably say more likely than not, though.”
The owners are expected to take up the matter again at their meeting in the fall, though contributing to the delay is uncertainty about whether they would need approval from the players union to do it.

Rendering of the new Minnesota Vikings stadium.Photo: AP

Though some owners insist NFLPA permission isn’t necessary under terms of the collective bargaining agreement, the union is thought to disagree and would want some trade-offs in return to agreeing to playoff expansion.

The owners also created a working committee to study the future of the NFL Draft, which could be headed out of Radio City Music Hall in part or as a whole as soon as next year.

The Post reported exclusively two weeks ago that eight cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Orlando, Arlington, Texas, and Canton, Ohio — have approached the league to express serious interest in hosting the draft, which the league might also expand to four days from its current three.

Radio City’s rights to hold the draft are in jeopardy because of continuing schedule conflicts over a planned Rockettes spring show that forced this year’s draft to be pushed back two weeks.

Goodell said Tuesday the league expects to receive available dates from Cablevision, the parent company of Radio City, in June.
A decision on the draft’s location in 2015 is scheduled to be made no later than this fall.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis was a surprise pick to play host to the 2018 Super Bowl over heavy-favorite New Orleans. Indianapolis also was a finalist.

Minneapolis, which also played host to a Super Bowl in 1992, was tabbed in part as a reward for the city and state of Minnesota contributing a huge chunk of the construction costs of a new $1 billion, 73,000-seat fixed roof stadium. The building is scheduled to open for the Vikings in 2016.